Hace+ time+ que

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Kullman
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Kullman » Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:02 am

I disagree with you...

"¿Cuánto tiempo hace que leíste ese libro?" is probably the most common form for this question.
El Forastero wrote:¿Ese libro hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?

Those two sentenceS can be used, but the question marks are misplaced.
Ese libro ¿hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
Ese libro ¿cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?
El Forastero wrote:Tú leíste ese libro hace cuánto tiempo?

I won't talk about the misplaced question mark, but that question sounds completely weird, and a native speaker would think is from someone who doesn't know the spanish grammar very well...
El Forastero wrote:¿Cuánto tiempo hace que ese libro leíste?
¿Ese libro lo leíste hace cuánto tiempo?

These sound like Master Yoda trying to speak spanish...

So yes, you can be understood with every one of those sentences, but most of them would require native speakers to try hard to understand you, or even smile and say "hablas como los indios, macho"...
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Querneus » Sun Feb 05, 2023 7:13 am

Kullman wrote:
El Forastero wrote:¿Ese libro hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?

Those two sentenceS can be used, but the question marks are misplaced.
Ese libro ¿hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
Ese libro ¿cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?

I strongly disagree with your style here...

Is this something you'd say is normal in Spain? I hardly ever come across single short noun phrases followed by the opening question mark. Usually it's something longer, or an adverbial.

Por cierto, ¿tenía razón ella al final?
Y en ese lugar tan recóndito, ¿solían encontrarse a menudo?
And such.

El Forastero wrote:Tú leíste ese libro hace cuánto tiempo?

I won't talk about the misplaced question mark, but that question sounds completely weird, and a native speaker would think is from someone who doesn't know the spanish grammar very well...

I think El Forastero intended an echo question there. I agree that's not the default way of asking this, but surely you'll agree echo questions in Spanish have this sort of grammar pattern, with the interrogatives placed in the middle or end of the sentence. Same goes for English.

¿Dijo el qué? She said what?
¿Trajiste cuántas manzanas? He brought how many apples?
¿Esto lo hizo cómo? He did this how?
Etc.

El Forastero wrote:¿Cuánto tiempo hace que ese libro leíste?
¿Ese libro lo leíste hace cuánto tiempo?

These sound like Master Yoda trying to speak spanish...

I agree the first one is very odd and Yoda-ish, but for what it's worth not the second one.

So yes, you can be understood with every one of those sentences, but most of them would require native speakers to try hard to understand you, or even smile and say "hablas como los indios, macho"...

No need to insult indigenous people. :|
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Kullman
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Kullman » Sun Feb 05, 2023 11:08 am

When you are browsing your friend's library, and you pick a certain book, you say "este libro" declaring that book is the one you are referring...

After the statement, with a small pause, you can say "me gusta mucho", or "lo leí hace mucho tiempo", or even ask a question about it.

It makes more sense than asking that sentence as a question.

I don't know where are you from, but those sentences sound quite odd here.

I'm pretty sure you aren't spaniard, and that's why you don't understand the "hablar como los indios" expression.

It comes from the spaniard dubbing of western movies, and the way they portrayed the indians in those movies, speaking a basic spanish to be able to be understood by the white characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyy94o20m9Q
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby El Forastero » Mon Feb 06, 2023 2:52 pm

Kullman wrote:In that case, we would say "cuanto tiempo hace que no das matemáticas" instead. This phrase could be used both to teach and to learn a subject.


I've never heard DAR as a synonim of APRENDER (Very common as a synonim of ENSEÑAR, though)

Here, it's more common to say "cuanto tiempo hace que no ves matemáticas"
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby tastyonions » Mon Feb 06, 2023 7:00 pm

"Dar matemáticas" in the sense of "attend math classes / study math" sounds pretty Spain-specific to me. I'm not a native speaker of any kind of Spanish, though.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Cainntear » Mon Feb 06, 2023 8:26 pm

Querneus wrote:
Kullman wrote:
El Forastero wrote:¿Ese libro hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?

Those two sentenceS can be used, but the question marks are misplaced.
Ese libro ¿hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
Ese libro ¿cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?

I strongly disagree with your style here...

Is this something you'd say is normal in Spain? I hardly ever come across single short noun phrases followed by the opening question mark. Usually it's something longer, or an adverbial.

I would caution that you've probably said and heard things a lot that you wouldn't expect to see written.

The structure Kullman used is something I might never actually have seen written, but it's something I definitely have heard used quite frequently. In fact, I have a feeling (caveat emptor: memory problems still ongoing) that I've heard something similar to
Ese libro ¿hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
and that it would often be subtitled as:
¿Hace cuánto tiempo que leíste ese libro?
...because the spoken form has a very specific purpose -- the item spoken first is in the "focussed" position deliberately to draw attention to it -- whereas the written form is considered more neutral and "no destaca tanto" (sorry, weirdly can't finish this sentence in English) so takes less attention to comprehend.

It is maybe worth pointing out that when I learned French in high school, we always spoke in sentences with direct objects next to the verb, but my experience later in life was that French is particularly keen on only having one noun in a clause and almost always uses a noun followed by a clause including a pronoun to refer back to the noun in the focused position:
eg mon frère, il est professeur
Or actually now that I think about it, you could have the noun seperate from the clause even if it only used an adjective:
Ma copine, elle est belle!

I imagine I glommed onto the spoken Spanish pattern quickly because it was so similar to the French, so never caused me any problem.

The other thing I would say is that Latin had extremely fluid order, and Castillian doesn't have the case system to help disambiguate, so different orders are genuinely seen as "default" in different dialect regions, and I don't think that's really "Spain vs Latin America", because there's at least as much variation in Latin America as there is in Spain, so if there's something that's common "in Spain", it's probably only in a part of Spain, and probably also common in some part of Latin America even though it's not universal.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Iversen » Mon Feb 06, 2023 9:21 pm

Concerning "Ese libro ¿hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?" ..

I have spent an hour or so perousing a book from the Gutenberg Project ("La Raza, el árbol de la ciencia" by Pio Bareja) while picking out all examples with something before or after the exlamation signs, and I found a fair number of parallels to the example above - like for instance (within a few pages)

-Y tu ¿qué haces?
Miedo, ¿de qué?"
Y Julio Iracil, ¿vive bien?
Una explicatión, ¿de qué?"
Su mujer, ¿como es?

There were also some with the substantival element placed within the 'enclosure' (i.e. not in extraposition):

pero ¿toda esta tienda es de usted? - pregunté Andrés

but at least in that book it was easier to find those where it was placed outside it.

In French the inverted question mark isn't used, but at least in the spoken language extraposition (in the initial position) with an anaphoric pronoun is probably the norm. The trouble for me personally is that I mostly deal with non-literary magazines and books and internet articles where extraposition - or indeed questions generally - are less common, and then my sense of proportions is challenged..
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Kullman
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Kullman » Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:29 pm

I have been following a series of short videos in Youtube from a mexican-american girl, and in of those she ask about the proper way to pronounce a certain word/phrase to her mexican mom.

The mexican mom says "se dice así", and the daughter ask "why?", and the answer is simply "porque suena mejor".

And that's the reason why I disagree with "El Forastero", those sentences doesn't sound right when readed, and even worse when pronounced.

Anyways, I only said than I disagree with him, and not than he is actually wrong, because there are a lot of variants of spanish, and words/expressions than mean something specific to me, have a completely different meaning in other countries, or even in some other regions of Spain.

The verbs "coger", which in Spain is used mostly as a synonim of "to hold", it have a completely different meaning in most countries of latinamerica.

Also "Esmagar", which is a common word in Galicia, isn't used (as far as I know) in other places of Spain.

It's probably a galician word adopted in our local language, as there isn't a spanish word than means exactly the same.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby tastyonions » Tue Feb 07, 2023 2:19 am

“Esmagar” exists in Portuguese as well: https://www.wordreference.com/pten/esmagar
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Kullman » Tue Feb 07, 2023 6:46 pm

Yep... it's like compressing something, but also kneading it in a way.
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